By By KEVIN TRAVIS, Sports Editor
PLYMOUTH — It’s not every day that kids get to run around with a couple of former NFL stars who played in the Super Bowl.
For a kid like Adam Moore, 8, it was a dream-come-true. Moore, and some 120 other campers, participated in Friday’s Second Charles Bowser NFL Youth Football Camp at Plymouth High School. Bowser and former Miami Dolphins teammate Mark “Super” Duper both played in the Super Bowl while with the Dolphins.
Moore, who looks like he’ll be a future star with the Plymouth Vikings, said he had a blast.
That’s just what Bowser, a former Plymouth High School and Duke University great, was hoping to hear.
Along with Bowser’s camp, two cheerleaders from the Dolphins appeared to sign autographs and watch what the young cheerleaders learned during a week-long camp in Plymouth.
Bowser, who finished his four-year NFL career with 20 sacks and trips to two Super Bowls, is happy he can return to his hometown to give back.
The camp was held on the same field where Bowser played his high school football.
Duper, a three-time Pro Bowl player who finished with 511 receptions for 8,869 yards and 59 touchdowns in his 11-year career, and Danny James, a former Italian Football League star, were a couple of the notable stars helping out Bowser. James, who played with Bowser during Plymouth’s 1977 conference championship season, earned several accolades playing at both Livingstone College and in the European professional football league.
Deshawn Allen, a rising senior at Plymouth, was happy he could participate in a camp with such former stars.
Donald Norman, who also assisted at the camp, said he had some flashbacks when he first stepped on the grass at Plymouth’s Foster Field. The former Vikings quarterback star went on to have a successful career at Elizabeth City State University.
Norman was glad to help out at the camp. He assisted in the passing drills where kids like Tyrese Cherry, 7, have hopes of one day being the next great Plymouth quarterback.
While he was only at camp to watch, Tee Moorman enjoyed every snap and drill he saw.
Moorman knows a thing or two about football. Moore, who was an All-American at Duke, had one of the most important receptions in bowl history. His 9-yard reception helped lift the Blue Devils to a 7-6 win over Arkansas, which was led by All-America back Lance Alworth, in the 1961 Cotton Bowl. Duke finished its season with an 8-3 record and ranked 10th in the AP poll.
Thanks in part to Bowser’s football camp, bowl games and Super Bowls just may be in the future for some lucky kids.